61: I tracked every minute of work time for a year. Here’s what I learned.

Five things you'll learn in this episode:

1. How tracking every minute of work can transform your time management and life quality.
2. The importance of balancing billable and non-billable hours for business and personal success.
3. How to optimise your work schedule for deep, meaningful productivity.
4. Strategies to increase your hourly rate while reducing overall working hours.
5. Why time is your most valuable resource and how to prioritise it effectively.

Episode transcript:

In 2024 I worked for 1,433 hours and 25 minutes, averaging 27.5 hours a week over six different task types. This is my review of that year of work, and the lessons we can all take from it.

But before we talk time, let’s talk about money.

Tracking your finances is a non-negotiable for building a financially successful business.

You should at least be tracking revenue, expenditure and profit from your business, and business health metrics like number of enquiries, number of new clients, client departures, and overall growth rate.

But you know that.

And money isn’t the only asset you’re trading in. You’re also trading in time. When your business is young, you’re time rich but money poor – you use your time to earn money. When your business is more mature, you’re money rich but time poor – you should use your money to buy back your time.

The management consultant, Peter Drucker, told us, ‘What gets measured, gets managed’, and I wanted to better manage my time – knowing that how I spend my time is a direct influence on the quality of my life.

So for every day of 2024, I tracked every minute of work I did.

The results were pretty revealing, so I’d like to dig into the numbers.

But first, some background info to give you a bit of context to better understand the numbers.

First and foremost, I’m a Dad and a Husband. I’ve got two little girls, who in 2024 were four and two. Our four year old was in Kindy three days a week, our two year old is with us full time – with some really valuable support from the grandparents. We’ve never used daycare. My wife is a Director in a very successful Employee Relations and HR Consultancy.

I work two full days a week, and two half days. That leaves me with three full days and two half days per week with my kids. Hopefully this bias of my time towards my family will tell you what my values are and where my priorities lie. This arrangement didn’t happen by accident. This is my 19th year as a business owner, and it hasn’t always been so ‘balanced’. In the early years I was working seven days a week. The hard work through my 20s and early 30s is what earned me the freedom I now have. Three years before we were planning to have kids, I intentionally re-engineered my business to ensure I could be the best Dad I could be. I’m now benefitting from that planning.

We have a two week holiday every Christmas, and do four two night mini-holidays a year. I also take three ‘deload weeks’ per year, where I don’t do any client facing work, but focus on business development, writing, and any other little ‘non business side projects’ I’ve been thinking about (like writing a series of children’s books to help instil the values we believe are most important in our kids).

I do my absolute best to make my time with the girls as intentional as possible. They do organised gymnastics classes, swimming lessons, rock climbing and dance, plus all the other stuff little girls do. I’m proud to be heavily involved in all this. At risk of gender stereotyping, half the week, I’m a ‘stay-at-home-mum’. And I love it. Two of my highlights of 2024 were teaching our four year old to ride a bike, and being in the water for swimming lessons with our two year old.

My wife works three days a week, but also works a lot in the evenings. She’s the heart of our family, and is complete